armed with guns. At their head was one Beers, the agent of Lord Roden,
and a magistrate who, for the "protection" of the Orangemen, had under
his command a strong body of the constabulary and a detachment of
soldiers. The ordinary Englishman, who knows the police as they are in
his country as the guardians of the public peace, must not confound them
with those in Ireland. The Irish constabulary are simply the permanent
British army of occupation, well armed and drilled, and, physically, as
fine a body of men as any in the world. These were the forces under the
command of Lord Roden's agent, for the invasion, for such it was, of a
peaceful Catholic district.

When the people sought to defend themselves from this invasion as best
they could, Beers, in his capacity as a magistrate, gave the police and
soldiers under his command the order to fire--which they did--upon the
people and into their houses. Consequently, what followed was nothing
short of a butchery, under cover of which the Orangemen wrecked the
Catholic houses in the glen.

I shall never forget the grief of my mother, at this time residing in
Liverpool, at reading in the newspapers the names of the victims who
had been murdered outright or wounded. They were all her next door
neighbours "at home"--people she had known from childhood.

The horrible outrage roused universal indignation. In Parliament the
Irish members demanded a full official enquiry as to how this murderous
business came to be carried out by a Government official. As a result
Lord Roden and his agent were deprived of the Commission of the
Peace--their offence was too glaring to be entirely overlooked. But to
the friends of those who had been legally murdered, and the innocent
people whose houses had been wrecked, this was a cruel mockery. Had the